Entrepreneurs in Egypt: Kareem Samara

Entrepreneurs in Egypt: Kareem Samara

Young entrepreneurs in Egypt are part of a new wave of self-employment sweeping the nation, and Mostafa Shahat writes about them.

Social media channels, specifically Facebook, was one of the main tools used during the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 to connect people and share news. Egypt is considered the first country in the entire Arab world to have such a huge number of internet and Facebook users, and ranks nineteenth in the world overall, with more than fifty million internet users, and over seventeen million Facebook users.

Kareem Samara is one of the Egyptian pioneers who used social media channels to promote companies’ products or/and services. He has delivered social media training to individuals and companies since 2010 to spread the awareness about the importance of social media and how it could be used for business.

In 2011, Kareem founded the internet life initiative with his partner. It lasted for one year and taught young Egyptian youth how to use the internet to find suitable jobs.

“It was not easy to start the initiative,” says Kareem. “We were changing the common culture for youth to find jobs, trying to convince them that social media is much easier and faster to find suitable jobs opportunities”.

Kareem delivered trainings to over than 2,200 students, entrepreneurs and employees on utilising the power of social media to increase companies’ visibility and profits. He was also one of the few trainers that trained companies on how to use LinkedIn to headhunt good calibre applicants. In 2013, Kareem worked as Social Media Manager at Rawfed Tech, and he is currently working as Social Media Manager at ReachOut Academy.

Kareem also founded the Social Business Kits company, which focused on running advertising campaigns for companies to promote and sell their products and/or services. He worked with Saudi Arabia and Malaysian companies as well as analysed campaigns for big companies’ advertising campaigns, like Pepsi and Coca-Cola and published it on Social Business Kits. The company attracts many followers on its social media channels and website, which is why Social Business Kits was ranked fourth in Egypt by Socialbakers in 2014.

Article submitted by Mostafa Shahat, the volunteer responsible for Arabic guest bloggers in the MENA region and an entrepreneur who has established one of the most successful youth communities in Egypt, Goal Oriented Learners. Mostafa studied social entrepreneurship in USA and is currently the Middle East & North Africa representative at StudySearch (Nigeria) and the Egypt representative for All Events in City (India). Mostafa is also a reporter at Nudge Sustainability Hub. Email him at [email protected] and check out his other blog A Syrian’s Success in Egypt and more from his Entrepreneurs in Egypt series.

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